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They gathered Wednesday, as they have done annually, to commemorate the attack on Pearl Harbor. A bugler played taps. A bell tolled. A memorial wreath was dropped into San Diego Bay.

Yet this ceremony had an added significance for the roughly 200 people in attendance on the flight deck of the USS Midway Museum.

They marked not only the 70th anniversary of the Japanese offensive, which killed more than 2,400 and propelled the United States into World War II, but also the final days of the Pearl Harbor Survivors Association.

On Dec. 31, the national group will disband due to the dwindling number of Pearl Harbor survivors and the poor health of most remaining members. In turn, all of the organization’s chapters must decertify by year’s end as well. The chapter for the San Diego region, which has 62 members, plans to continue meeting — but as a social club.

The association’s demise is the most official sign yet of the fast-disappearing ranks of witnesses to a cornerstone event in U.S. history.

“Let’s face it. There are so many dying off and there’s no one to replace them,” said Jack Currier, 89, of Chula Vista, a member of San Diego County’s Pearl Harbor Survivors Association Carnation Chapter 3.

The national association was founded in 1958 with a roster of 28,000, then granted a Congressional charter in October 1985. As of Sept. 1, the membership had plunged to roughly 2,700 out of an estimated 7,000 to 8,000 Pearl Harbor veterans still alive.

Leaders of the organization said its closing long had been expected. They found it increasingly difficult to fill the positions of president, vice president, treasurer and secretary.

“It was obvious that we could not continue the requirements that corporate 501c lays on our membership and on our board,” said William H. Muehleib, the association’s national president, referring to the group’s tax-exempt, nonprofit status.

Bob Ruffato, an 88-year-old Pearl Harbor survivor who lives in Pacific Beach, said he was sad about the turn of events.

“I was kind of surprised, I really was,” he said of the decision to dissolve. “But then you stop to realize that many of our chapters had dissolved because they didn’t have enough members to even make a quorum. If you got below seven members, you were automatically closed down.”

He and other members of Carnation Chapter 3 intend to keep gathering once a month.

Ruffato said they, like other Pearl Harbor survivors, share a bond forged amid trauma that Dec. 7 of 1941 — a connection that remains year after year.

“We have been close up to this time,” he said. “It is something that happened in our lives that will never happen again.”

Ruffato was aboard the battleship Utah when enemy planes attacked it, causing the vessel to capsize in 12 minutes. He remembers jumping off the ship and diving deep to hang onto coral and avoid getting hit by strafing machine-gun fire.

On Wednesday, Ruffato attended a memorial service in Balboa Park. Other local commemorations included a wreath-laying ceremony at the Oceanside Pier, tributes held at a few schools and special gatherings at some Veterans of Foreign Wars posts.

Carnation Chapter 3 lost 16 members in the past year, said chapter president Stu Hedley, 90. Hedley read the names of the departed during the Midway ceremony, including Arnold V. “Max” Bauer.

Bauer, a former Navy machinist, died months after he was discovered ailing and living in squalor in his East County home this year. The woman who was his live-in caregiver, Milagros Angeles, faces charges of elder abuse, theft of a caretaker, false imprisonment of an elder and possession of altered checks.

As the survivors association ends, a group is stepping up its efforts to extend the Pearl Harbor legacy.

The Sons and Daughters of Pearl Harbor Survivors plans to continue the survivors’ mission of never forgetting the attack. Like the survivors, these successors hold presentations at schools, speak at community meetings and attend memorial events. The sons and daughters group has more than 3,000 members and 30 chapters across the country.

“We know the stories already, and many of us have the actual memorabilia of our parents,” said the group’s president, Louella Large of East Canton, Ohio.

Large said her organization also has scheduled its first convention — for next year in San Diego. “We will host it for the sons and daughters and also the Pearl Harbor survivors. In the past years, the Pearl Harbor Survivors Association always included us and now the roles are reversed,” she said. “We will include them.”

After the Midway ceremony concluded, the dozen or so survivors who attended were engulfed by well-wishers. Some people thanked them for their service, others asked for autographs, still others wanted to hear them share memories of that infamous day.